Limehouse Basin is a body of water east of London Bridge that is also a navigable link between the River Thames and two of London's canals. First dug in 1820 as the eastern terminus of the new Regent's Canal, its wet area was less than originally, but it was gradually enlarged in the Victorian era, reaching a maximum of double that size, when it was given its characteristic oblique entrance lock, big enough to admit 2,000-ton ships.
Throughout its working life the basin was better known as the Regent's Canal Dock, and was used to transship goods between the old Port of London and the English canal system. Cargoes handled were chiefly coal and timber, but also ice, and even circus animals, Russian oil and First World War submarines. Sailing ships delivered cargoes there until the Second World War, and can be seen in surviving films and paintings. The dock closed for transshipment in 1969 and eventually passed into disuse. Following closure of the basin and much of the wider London docks, the surroundings were redeveloped for housing and leisure in the late 20th century. Sometimes now referred to as the Limehouse Marina, the Basin lies between the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) line and historic Narrow Street; the Limehouse Link tunnel passes beneath. Directly to the east is Ropemaker's Fields, a small park.
History Reasons for construction
Fuel for London; Thames congestion To warm their homes and cook their food Londoners at one time burned wood, but local woodlands, though managed as renewable resources, could not keep up with the rising demand. Thus by the 18th century the town's fuel was chiefly coal, imported from Newcastle upon Tyne by sea — hence, sea coal. It was transported in colliers, typically small brigs. Because voyages could be extremely hazardous, these were built for strength, "certainly not for looks".
Arriving in the Thames, a collier tried to find a mooring in the highly congested Pool of London. Once moored, a fleet of small barges, called lighters, relieved her of her cargo. But these lighters were used as floating warehouses, perhaps taking a long time to unload. They attracted "River-Pirates, Night-Plunderers, Lightermen, Burgemen, Watermen, Bumboatmen, and Peter-Boatmen", to the point that rivermen rarely paid for their coals, or so said Patrick Colquhoun, founder of the Thames River Police.
Linking Port to English canal system Some inland towns depended on the English canal system for their coals, yet access from the Pool of London was difficult, the nearest Thames link being at Brentford. The Regent's Canal Company proposed to tackle this problem by digging their canal to skirt round existing London to the north. Horse-towed barges would deliver goods along the route from Limehouse to the Paddington Branch of the Grand Union Canal (opened 1801), and onwards. "The Regent's Canal was intended to and still does bring the Thames into watery contact with, say, Birmingham". Later, it was sometimes found cheaper to import coal in the opposite direction. The Newcastle mine owners were in a cartel to keep up prices and, when they went too far, midland coalfields sent their produce to London down the Regent's Canal.
Where a canal joined a tidal river there was usually a small basin where barges could wait for the right state of the tide to go over. The Regent's Canal Company, short of capital, thought it would be enough to provide a small 1 acre basin of that sort at Limehouse. However, they were converted to a bolder idea: making it big enough to receive the Newcastle sailing colliers themselves, which could then unload at their convenience.
The Basin: original 1820 version
The chief engineer was James Morgan and the contractor was Hugh McIntosh; the basin's wet area was 4 acres.Another source says "about 5 acres": .
The basin formally opened on 1 August 1820. The Regent's Canal entered the basin through the Commercial Road Lock, which is still in use.
The original basin was rudimentary. It was not faced with stone or brick but, to save disposal of spoil, had earthen banks gradually sloping down to the bottom, which was below Trinity High Water. Since ships could not get alongside to moor there were wooden jetties for discharging goods to local merchants, but they had been built too high. There were not enough mooring buoys.
The Basin was gradually enlarged in the 19th century by digging east and southeast (see below). At the century's end parts of the west and north banks were sloping still.See the 1895 O.S. map fragment reproduced in this article.
Thames entrance The Basin was dug some distance inland, since the riverfront was built up. It was connected to the Thames by a short canal that was crossed by two streets. It had a pound lock, and could admit ships of about 10 metres beam.. It was 125 feet long and 31 feet wide. (This canal outlet ran more or less where Horseferry Road does today as it joins Narrow Street.) Traffic on Narrow Street crossed the canal by a swing bridge, which could pivot out to let vessels pass, driven by labourers who worked capstans (see artist's impression).
The canal outlet was made nearly square-on to the river, but it turned out to be a bad choice. When ships were trying to dock or undock, the local set of the tide flowed crossways, making it very difficult. In the first five months' service only 15 loaded ships entered the dock.
Not only ships, but already-laden barges entered the Basin from the Thames.See e.g. the artist's impression, 1826.
Not the first Limehouse basin Limehouse Basin was the third structure of that name in London.In 1820 there already existed: The Limehouse Basin of the Limehouse Cut (1768), London's oldest canal (1819 map: white arrow). This canal connected with the River Lea to bring grain to London from Hertfordshire. The Limehouse Basin of the West India Docks (1802), which communicated with Limehouse Reach. It is visible in John Fairburn's map of May 7th, 1800; see Embanking of the tidal Thames#Isle of Dogs. In any case half of it lay in the parish of Ratcliff, not Limehouse.1819 Horwood/Fadden map. Hence throughout its working life it was better known as the Regent's Canal Dock; its "RCD" flag can be seen in the 1826 artist's impression.
Muscle power: coal-whipping Coal was unloaded in the Basin from ships to barges. Until 1853 it was done entirely by human muscle power in a method called whipping. Four men down in the ship's hold put lumps of coal into a basket as fast as they could. Up on deck, another four men, when they guessed the basket should be full, ran up a crude ladder and jumped down onto the deck simultaneously, each throwing his weight onto a rope passing over a pulley: this jerked (or whipped) the basket out of the hold. Keeping up the momentum, a ninth man tipped the contents into a weighing machine which shot them into a barge. The whole thing was done in silence. A nine-man gang was expected to unload 49 tons of a coal a day; more often, according to Henry Mayhew, they achieved double that amount — during which each rope man climbed a total distance of nearly 1 vertical miles — and sometimes more.
Modifications and success The proprietors soon fixed the teething troubles about the jetties and mooring buoys and the project became a success. By 1830, twenty to fifty vessels were entering or leaving the basin on each tide, typical large users being the London gasworks companies.
To cope with the currents a timber structure was erected to protect vessels being driven sideways (illustration). Nevertheless, wrote engineer John Baldry Redman in 1848, the entrance bore "a very bad character".
The London and Blackwall Railway arrived in 1840. Built on a viaduct, its arches skirted the northern edge of the dock, sometimes actually crossing the water. Thus the dock included a small basin on the other side of the railway line where barges could enter;See the maps Limehouse Basin in its heyday, 1880 plan, and 1895 O.S. it was not filled in until 1926. The railway continued to carry passengers until 1922 and goods until 1964, when it was abandoned, and was in danger of demolition, but its "fine" arches (by Robert Stephenson and George Bidder) were preserved as a listed building; today, they are used by the Docklands Light Railway.
The dock was enlarged several times (by 1848 the water area was 8 or 9 acres) and, in 1849, to cope with increasing congestion, a second outlet to the river was made for barge traffic.
In 1851 severe competition arrived: the railway companies penetrated the coal trade. Not only was coal from Yorkshire and the Midlands carried direct to King's Cross by the Great Northern Railway, but the North London Railway opened a line to the West India Docks, whose Poplar Dock could handle the latest large, efficient twin-screw steam colliers.
In Limehouse Basin, human muscle could not unload coal fast enough; electrical power was not yet practical; so in 1853 hydraulic power was fitted. Energy was stored in hydraulic accumulators (a heavy weight on a water column driven up a tower by a steam engine), a cutting edge technology at the time. It drove hydraulic cranes.
Mid-Victorian improvements (1870)
By 1865, the basin was overcrowded. The old ship canal was not wide enough for the big steam colliers that were winning the business. It was the only dock entrance in London too narrow to admit the fire brigade's floating engine (a paddle-wheeler). A major scheme of improvements was authorised by the (28 & 29 Vict. c. ccclxv), and carried out. The work was done by the company's own employees under their chief engineer, Edwin Thomas.
The wet area was increased to 10 acres, the most it everIn 1935 the company's chairman reported it was still 10 acres: . It has since been reduced by the building of Marina Heights along its northern arc and filling in for the Limehouse West development: . attained.It was intended to make it bigger still, by absorbing part of Limehouse Cut which had its own basin, but this scheme fell through: . A new river wall was erected. Meanwhile, it was business as usual, for the shipping traffic continued to come and go, floating in the old basin while protected by an earthen dam (see illustration).
Ship lock The most important innovation was the new ship lock, which was wide, and built slantwise to avoid the previous troubles. It was 8 metres deep over the sills. Major parts were made of Bramley Fall stone or Cornish granite. It could admit sea-going vessels of 2,000 tons net register, far more than would be possible now (today's lock is built inside the 1869 original). It was a two-compartment lock, and hence there were three lock gates, each formed by a pair of leaves. Each 80-ton gate leaf rested on a massive granite pivot stone. Most of those stones — with their telltale circular depressions — have been preserved, and today are laid out on display on the western side of the Basin.
Limehouse Basin now had three entrances from the Thames. The old ship lock was closed off by 1880, but the barge lock continued to exist until about 1924.
The accumulator tower
To work the heavy lock gates, hydraulic power was used; it also worked the swing bridge over Narrow Street, and continued to power the hydraulic cranes. For this purpose a newHydraulic power had been employed since 1853, the dock being one of the first in London to use it. hydraulic accumulator was built with an unusual octagonal brick tower.
In 1973, investigators found the remains of the tower and at first mistook it for a railway signalling installation. It is now recognised as one of the oldest surviving accumulator towers in the world and is a Grade II listed building, being open every year during Open House Weekend.
Jobs Alan H. Faulkner wrote that in 1907 Limehouse Basin employed (amongst others) a dock master, six policemen, thirteen crane drivers, and a diver and his mate.
Exotic cargoes and transport